Information wanted on Carley Floats/Balsa Life Floats, WWII

American inventor Horace Carley invented an invertible life float, patented in 1903, that saw widespread use in WWI,WW2 and the interwar period. It was made of a vertically baffled copper or steel tube, 12-20 inches in diameter, wrapped with kapok or cork, and then a cotton canvas outer layer that was waterproofed by painting or doping. It had a net suspended from the interior with a wooden slat floor. It came in multiple sizes up to 50 men.


Carley Float


Note Carley floats stowed on and below island of HMS Victorious.

Now the balsa wood life floats are in virtually every way similar to the Carley floats but are made up of balsa wood. The earliest regulation I can find referencing these is a USCG regulation dated 31 March, 1943, where it is stipulated that "all vessels operating on ocean or coastwise waters" were required to be equipped with these life floats. I haven't found any documentation but assume that the need to preserve scare strategic materials for other uses (copper/brass, steel, kapok for life jackets) led to the switch to balsa wood.

This excerpt from the USCG regulations lays out the construction requirements and lists the capacities as 10-, 15-, 25-, 40-, or 60-persons.

You can tell the balsa wood life floats from the Carley floats because the former is primarily rectangular (I have seen a few oval ones), with a flatter profile and the latter is oval with a rounded profile. Do not confuse either of these with floater nets, (which I've seen repeatedly as I've searched for information). Floater nets were nets with floats around the perimeter and were stowed in baskets on board ship and were meant as temporary floatation in case of a rapid sinking until personnel could get to lifeboats or Carly/balsa rafts.



Balsa life float stowed on side of 5" mount, US Navy Museum.

I'd like more sources on sizes, dimensions, additional historical information, etc.; so if anyone can point me in the right direction it would be greatly appreciated!

 

Thank you for the reply, Lou. Yes, I had read that thread during my internet searches on the subject. The OP had a really flawed take on the subject, but he was fairly rapidly debunked. I noticed a few of the usernames debunking the OP, had once been frequent posters here. Smart guys! I always enjoyed lwd's posts. He was last here 1 August, 2019 and had 12,312 posts! Then phylo_roadking, didn't know him as good as lwd, but he had some interesting posts, last here 4 April 2017 and had 1381 posts. It would be nice if we had them back.

 

Here is some additional information I stumbled across at the Naval Historical Society of Australia website:

Carley Life Rafts of WW2 - Naval Historical Society of Australia (navyhistory.org.au)

 

Interesting story I ran across while still researching this subject; Naval History and Heritage Command, Oral History, 83 days on a life raft.

83 days on a life raft (navy.mil)

Back to Lou's post, here there were 299 people on board the ship when torpedoed (crew 112, 18 naval armed guard and 169 passengers, many from four previously torpedoed ships) only three survivors. It does appear that the determining factor is how quickly they can be discovered and rescued. From my reading two lifeboats got away, the rest were destroyed or damaged, and the only survivors were the ones on the raft.

 

Great, it was a really good story.